


Light as a feather

by anarchyarmin



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, I have given myself a cavity writing this fluff, M/M, Military Training, canonverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-10-03 23:58:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10262003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anarchyarmin/pseuds/anarchyarmin
Summary: Armin's fear of being a burden haunts him; it pushes him to train harder than ever. When his quick thinking during a crisis fails to convince him of his ability, Eren decides to adopt a new mode of persuasion to help relieve Armin's fears. // Canonverse (training arc) focusing on the progression of Eren and Armin's relationship.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I found a mostly-finished sequel to my little fic "Bruises" in my WIP folder and decided to resurrect it. Although this is technically canonverse, I've aged everyone up a few years.

Please don’t hurt yourself, Eren thinks as he spots Armin at the far end of the training yard. The last handful of trainees finishes their grueling workout in the shade of a wooden pavilion. There's no time limit for the exercises, only the logs which have to be filled out and turned in. Most trainees rush through them as quickly as their bodies will allow. But a few hang back, taking their time, talking.

The dry grass crunches under Eren and Mikasa's boots. Eren pouts.

"Why doesn't he lift with us anymore?" Eren asks. "I don't mind switching out the weights, it really doesn't take that long—"

"Eren, think about it," Mikasa says. Her fatigue is beginning to eclipse her patience. "It's not about re-racking the weights. It's a mental thing." She stretches her arms and cracks her knuckles. "If Krista can meet the strength requirements, then certainly Armin can. And Mina likes training with him because she thinks if she’s at the same level as one of the boys, maybe she won’t have to leave.”

Eren nods. Their cohort had dwindled rapidly.

“He knows what he’s doing, Eren.”

Eren doesn't doubt it. It's just that Armin seems to be spending more and more time in the training yard lately. They reach the pavilion.

"Hey," Eren says. "Don't you think you've done enough for today?"

"Maybe." Armin sits catching his breath while the others stretch. Ymir, long since finished, massages Krista’s shoulders.

"You should be careful," Mikasa says. She reaches out her hand and Armin grabs it to stand up. "If you do too much, you'll get injured."

"Well, that's the last thing I want. You guys having to carry me around everywhere." He glances at the ground for a second. "More than you already do."

Eren can't tell if Armin's face is flushed from exertion or embarrassment. He and Mikasa exchange a worried glance.

**

If Armin gets injured, they’ll have even less time together. Eren resents not showering together as often. Their moments of true privacy are rare, even just a few fleeting minutes when the others have all left the bathhouse.

"What am I going to do if I have to leave," Armin whispered the night before. The others’ snores and creaking bunks concealed their conversation. In two days they’d be tested again, on the long course through the woods. Armin failed his previous attempt.

Eren rolled over and wrapped his arm around Armin's waist. "You won't have to leave.” He pulled Armin closer.

"But what if I do?"

Eren propped his head up. "You're too smart to fail."

"Eren," Armin groaned. "I'm serious. What if they make me go back." The only things keeping Armin from failing are his strategic ability and knowledge of the gear. For the physical skills, he's fallen to the end of the pack.

"But you're still passing," Eren whispered. "Shadis said you're improving."

Barely, Armin thought. When he isn't dreaming of life outside the walls, he tries to piece together a back-up plan inside them. If he leaves, he will have no money, no relatives, and a fractured education. He considers becoming a medic. Maybe pleading his way into an apprenticeship with a newspaper or a publisher. If he didn’t have his intellect, he would have nothing, he thinks. And the thought of being left behind, having to wait to see if his friends return alive or dead, crushes him.

Eren ran his fingers through Armin's hair and down his back. "They're not going to send you back."

Armin heaved a sigh.

"They know I'm taking you with me wherever I go," Eren said with a wily smile.

It’s difficult to talk about nightmares, Armin realized. Eren always struggled to describe the unique hells his mind descended into at night. No wonder, then, it’s hard to discuss his own. Armin tried to take some comfort in Eren's stubbornness. But the only thing that scares him more than being sent back to the farms, sent back to beg his way through the world inside the walls, is the prospect of being on the battlefield with Eren, unable to pull his own weight.

**

Armin says nothing at dinner.

"Armin, are you ok?" Mikasa asks as the last of the food vanishes from their plates.

"I'm just always afraid I can't do it," he says quietly, looking at the table.

Eren puffs himself up to contradict him.

"I worry that I can't do it either," Mikasa says softly before Eren can get a word in.

"What do you mean?" Armin asks.

"Well," she says, "we run, all the time. But none of us can outrun a titan. We lift weights, but none of us is stronger than a titan. We do all these drills, and we get these scores, but what if it's not enough? What if none of us can do it?"

"We have to find out," Eren growls.

"It'd be one thing if we were just trying to get into the interior," Mikasa says. "And I have no doubt you'd be a fine technician, or an engineer, or even a professor," she says to Armin, smiling gently.

"But that isn't what we want," Eren whines.

Armin cracks a faint smile.

"All that matters is that we survive, long enough to keep fighting,” Mikasa says. "Who knows if any of us will? But Armin," she says, "you have to give yourself some credit. You've improved so much..."

He stares awkwardly at his plate.

"Listen," she says, her tone suddenly blunt. "I know you think you're not a good soldier, but you're still a soldier. How much stronger are you than any civilian? And you're still here. You've seen how many people have left! Quit, gotten injured, or even died!"

"She's right," Eren says. "Eventually none of it may matter. But eventually... We might all realize we're stronger than we think."

Armin nods. He wants to believe them. But their efforts to reassure him just deepen the dread. He embraces the probability of death. What he can’t accept is one of them dying to save him.

The cool night air envelops them as they leave the mess hall. Armin turns to give Mikasa a hug before she leaves for the women's barrack. She has tears in her eyes.

"We've already been through so much, you know," she whispers. She wraps her arms around him. "We've already seen so much more than nearly everyone here. Please don't forget that, okay? Please don't forget everything we've already done!"

She's right. But the fact that she's crying for his sake makes him feel heavy. Dead weight. She kisses him on the cheek, embraces Eren, and follows her long shadow back across the lawn.

**

“Armin?”

Eren brushes Armin’s face, but he sleeps deeply after the day’s training.

Dawn begins to break when Armin stirs, still leaden and worn out, but pleased to wake up to the weight of Eren’s arm across his chest. He turns and kisses Eren’s nose. Eren’s eyes flutter open and he smiles.

If Eren had any nightmares, Armin slept too soundly to notice. Eren hadn't bothered waking him for a reality check and a hug. Lately the nightmares were fewer and farther between. Armin felt awful for Eren, yet secretly relieved to be able to do something, anything for him.

A half-awake Eren kisses Armin's forehead. Armin drizzles his fingernails down Eren's back and elicits a happy moan.

When he pictures the future, this is part of what Eren imagines. The liminal space before dawn. Running his fingers through Armin's hair. Far from the walls, in some mystical country with nothing that can take their peace away. And with real privacy, not just the mutual agreement between the cadets not to ask about the empty beds each morning.

They’re not going to send him back, Eren says to himself. The thought of separation is too difficult to bear. He pushes it out of his mind as much as he can.

Eren clutches Armin closer and the sensation of Armin's nails sends another pleasant shiver down his spine. Everything is well in the world before dawn. Armin relaxes back into sleep, and Eren gently traces the edge of Armin's cheek with his thumb and sighs. In his mind, Armin is a talisman that keeps the nightmares at bay.


	2. Chapter 2

Something glinting catches Armin's eye: a spider web in the window in the early morning light. What's the use of building something that's only going to be destroyed? Armin wonders. Once the morning cleaning duty starts, the little creature will be homeless.

As a child he crushed a spider once by accident, stepping out of the bathtub. He screamed and his mother came running, relieved it was only surprise instead of pain. From time to time he thinks about that moment: his first glimpse of how carelessly life can be stamped out. There used to be a time when the scariest thing in my life was a spider, Armin thinks. The threads of the web are woven so precisely. But what degree of intelligence could have spared his tiny victim, the foot descending as if to blot out the sun? Armin sighs and rolls over on the mattress.

"Are you ok?" Eren asks.

"I'm fine," Armin says. He slides closer to Eren.

**

Armin’s labored breathing echoes through the woods. He tries to conceal it and fails, already a lap behind the others.

“Run faster, titan food,” Jonas sneers as he passes him.

Annie slows to a halt, twenty paces ahead. She turns to the tall boy and scowls. When he slows down, she stares with the gravity of an executioner.

“Shut up, Jonas,” Annie spits. Her face is hatched with little cuts and bruises from the morning’s combat training. “You have never even  _seen_  a titan.”

The three of them stand frozen for an instant. She strikes. A kick to the shin. A backhanded slap. Jonas tumbles into the mud. Armin would laugh if he weren’t so embarrassed and stunned. Annie looks at him with a touch of remorse, then takes back off down the trail. Armin follows at a respectful distance and Jonas’ moans of pain grow fainter behind them.

The shade of the woods is a grace, but the heat still oppresses them. Armin begs his feet to obey him. He pines for the next day of leave and the chance to go swimming, and his body remembers the touch of the clear, cool river.

“If we’re going to see the ocean, then we’d better learn how to swim,” he said to Eren.

Eren and Armin pretended it was the heat that made them want to learn. They never told Armin’s mother they had grander designs as she stood with them in the shallows of the river, teaching them first how to float.

When Mikasa joined them, they taught her, too. On the first hot days of the summer, the water was blissful. Mikasa beamed with pride when she finally got it. They invented games. They lay on the flat river stones in the sun and made up stories until Carla insisted they come in for dinner. Armin remembers the thrill of swimming, diving for coins, sailing paper boats, and in the evenings, falling asleep next to Eren, warm and relaxed from the cool water.

Footsteps pick up behind him, and Armin remembers running.

They were after him. They were too fast. Their shouting echoed through the narrow alleys. Armin darted past the empty market stalls, past the stone fountain in the center of the square, and suddenly remembered: the other boys couldn’t swim.

They grazed his hair with their thick, grubby fingers. He dashed off toward the truss bridge over the river. The current was fast, but the water was just deep enough to dive. He stood at the center of the bridge and caught his breath. The three other boys stopped, fists clenched, still muttering—but confused.

“What’s the matter, heretic—“  
“What’s wrong, you little piece of shit—“

Armin simply grinned. “I have to be somewhere.” He stretched out his arms and let himself fall into the water below. He drifted downstream on his back and shot an obscene gesture at the furious boys on the bridge.

“Armin?” Mikasa looked wide-eyed at her waterlogged friend as he trudged up to the Jaegers’ back door. “What happened?”

“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “I, uh…ran into some trouble on the way here.”

Carla made him change into some of Eren’s dry clothes. He needed no help buttoning the slightly-too-long shirt. Eren just liked to do it anyways, grinning with pride at his clever best friend. In that moment, Armin decided only two things would get him through his life: his cleverness, and his friends.

The only way he can ever protect them is cleverness, he thinks as his feet pound the dirt. What happens when it’s snuffed out like a candle? When the paralysis of fear claims his ability to think?

**

A bonfire blazes in the dark courtyard. A few tired trainees sit on the rough-hewn benches that circle it.

“And then,” Armin says, looking into the flames, “she kicked him in the shin and smacked him in the face."

Eren snort-laughs into his tin mug of tea. Mikasa rolls her eyes. Eren shakes his head and wraps his arm around Armin’s shoulders, grinning like a fool.

“I wish I had been there,” Eren says.

“You would have done the same thing, wouldn’t you?” Mikasa leans her head against Eren’s shoulder. But Eren and Armin detect the secret pride in her voice.

“You know it,” Eren says. He ruffles Mikasa’s hair and she can't help but smile.

“Shadis made her clean the stables for two weeks, and Jonas started laughing at her,” Armin says. “She said she didn’t care, and that Jonas 'fucking deserved it.'”

Eren continues to chuckle.

“And then, he said Jonas had to clean them too.”

Mikasa sighs. She hates it as much as Eren does when the others make snide comments about Armin. In spite of it all, she wishes she had been there instead of Annie.

"Are you ready for tomorrow?" She asks him as they make their way back to the barracks.

He nods. "I have a plan."

"Did you see who's on your squad?" Eren asks.

"Yeah, I looked on my way back in," Armin says. Team assignments for the next day's test hang on a wall near the mess hall. "Mina, Sasha, Marco, and Jonas."

**

“I ought to kick his teeth in,” Eren mutters to the ceiling.

“Don’t,” Armin whispers. “Shadis will just make you clean the stables, and then I won’t get to see you after dinner for two weeks.”

Armin feels the grimace Eren makes without seeing it. Eren grips him tighter.

“Armin, why do you put up with it?” he says, now lying on his back, contracted with anger. “How can you stand it? I hate it! I hate it when they talk to you like that—“

“Eren, shhhh.” Armin turns around and settles into the crook of Eren’s arm. He brushes his fingers along Eren’s temple and jawline and traces his collarbone. When Eren calms down, Armin wraps his arm around his waist.

“They just say it because they’re afraid.”

Armin's right. Eren knows it, and hates it.

"Everyone's afraid," Eren says. "It doesn't give them an excuse." He rests his head on Armin's chest. "They're afraid of you," he says after a moment.

"No they aren't," Armin says, shaking his head in the dark.

"The others were afraid of you too, before."

"Eren."

"You know they were," Eren says. "They are now." Eren sneers. "They should be afraid of how stupid they are. You remember what Mikasa said the other night. Nobody can outrun a titan." Eren pulls the thin blanket back over them. "I think the only thing anyone can do is outsmart one," Eren whispers. "And I think you're the only one who can figure it out."

"Eren. Come on. Give yourself some credit," Armin says. Then he senses Eren's smile.

"Only if you do, too."

Armin is silent for a moment.

“Come on,” Eren says. “You’ve never let me down.”

Maybe not, Armin thinks. Not yet.

**

The course runs three miles through the dense woods. Armin takes deep breaths and configures his gear. Ostensibly, it's a team exercise. But each trainee is scored on their individual kills, and Armin needs two to pass. Only twelve of the huge mannequins wait for the five of them. Marco or Sasha could make short work of them alone.

Armin watches the others check gauges and tighten their straps. Mina is quick, but not a threat. Jonas is much better on the ground than in the air.

Shadis fires a flare. Armin looks for his first contact point and fires. He pulls himself through the air in a steady arc, straight forward, breaking away from the group. He disappears into the distance, each stroke through the air using as little fuel as possible.

"Hey!" Jonas shouts. The others fan out to the sides of the course. "What are you doing? Hey, where are you going?!"

But the others are too preoccupied to answer.

The two girls tending a massive artificial titan toward the end of the course don't expect to hear anyone so soon. Startled, one pulls the rope to release it. Armin hears the familiar creak of wood. He jumps to a higher branch and lands an easy blow to the padded neck. The other young woman crosses his name off a list.

Just one more, Armin thinks. He hears Sasha's laughter starting to catch up. Please, not yet. He darts ahead. He notices a growing shadow. Another strike.

He drifts through the air, relieved. He nearly collides with a third mannequin.

"Ahhhhh!"

Armin slices off the top of the padding and somersaults painfully to the ground. He looks up, panting. His blades have broken. He pulls himself to his feet, stiff and in shock, and takes to the air again, his heart pounding. Around the corner, Shadis and a group of other students wait on horseback. Armin collapses to the ground again, heaving and drenched in sweat.

"Armin!" Mikasa jumps down from her horse and runs over to him. Eren follows. Neither of them expected to see him finish the course so soon, much less first. Armin stands up slowly and lays his arms over their shoulders.

Sasha lands with a satisfied giggle, and Marco touches down behind her.

"That's three for Arlert," an instructor reads off a piece of parchment, "Four for Blaus; four for Bodt; one for Carolina...and zero for Hillert."

"Hey!" Jonas yells at Armin as he lands. "You can't do that! You can't just skip straight to the end of the course!"

Shadis peers down from his horse at the fuming boy. "There are several Survey Corps vanguard maneuvers,” he says slowly, “in which one squad member takes a long lead. However," he looks down at Armin, "none of these have been covered in your lectures yet." He narrows his gaze. "Clever work, Arlert."

"That's not fair!" Jonas screams.

"Look at your gauges," Armin says, his voice hoarse.

"What?"

"Look. At. Your gauges." Armin is still catching his breath.

Sasha looks at the tiny dials on her gas canisters and laughs. "Oh my god, I'm almost completely out."

"Oh. Whoa, me too," Marco says. "What are yours?" He turns to Armin.

"Thirty percent," Mikasa reads from the little gauge, the glass face cracked from Armin's fall.

"In the field," Shadis says, "had your squad member stayed behind...none of you would have had enough gas to finish the targets at the end. This is poor planning. This is what is we are getting into, moving forward. Efficiency." He looks down at Armin one more time. He pulls his horse's reins and prepares to lead the group back to the camp. "Don't forget your stable duty with Leonhardt," he says to Jonas.

**

Eren notices the wide, dark bruises on Armin's legs as he towels off from the shower. He inhales sharply.

"My shins hit my blade case when I fell." He pulls on a clean shirt.

"Shit," Eren mutters. They finish getting dressed.

"Everything hurts," Armin says. "I'm going to be sore for days."

Eren cracks a smile. "I know. But that was brilliant."

Armin sits on the bench in the little vestibule. The others have all left for dinner. Armin looks at the floor. "It doesn't matter."

"What are you talking about?"

"Eren, none of it's real," Armin says weakly.

"Armin—"

"If they'd been real, that last one would have snatched me out of the air like a moth," Armin says.

"Armin." Eren grips his shoulders. "You have to quit saying that kind of thing."

"You sound like Mikasa," Armin says to the floor.

"Armin, come on." Eren kneels in front of him and grips his waist. "We aren't even done with the training! This is practice!"

Armin still looks at the ground.

"You know everyone who does the course tomorrow is going to do what you did," Eren says softly. "Now they can't even run the course the same way because of you." Eren stands up. Armin looks up at him and smiles faintly. "Because apparently, you think like the Survey Corps."

Armin scoffs.

“And what they do is real. And they do survive.”

Armin hangs his head and Eren kisses the top of it.

"Come on," Eren says. He holds out his hand and helps Armin up. "Let's go eat, I'm starving."

They hold hands as they walk though the cool night air. Armin lets go when they reach the door to the mess hall. He tries to ignore the pairs of eyes that follow him.


	3. Chapter 3

"Clear!" Mikasa shouts. She fires at the splintered, messy targets on the wall. Long tables run behind her through the shed at the end of the compound. Pillars of sun stream in through the skylights, lighting up the currents of dust swirling up from the floor. Mikasa flicks the triggers on the gun mechanisms beneath her blade hilts. The hooks on the ends of the long metal cables unlatch from the wall. But one cable doesn't retract. Her eyes widen. She tries the trigger again. Nothing. "Shit," she mutters.

This, coming from the girl who never curses, makes Armin turn around. "What's the matter?" He sees the wilted line lying along the floor. "Oh."

Mikasa glances around the shed. The others have all just left besides Armin and Eren, finished with their preparatory maintenance for the next day's inspections. She hangs her head and groans. "Do I have to take it all apart again?"

Armin gives her a solemn nod. She drags the limp line to the table.

"What's wrong with it?" Eren asks, cleaning a series of tiny gears with a tiny brush.

"I have an idea," Armin says. Mikasa isn't known for making dumb mistakes, which means this isn't something obvious. She rolls out a sheet of waxed canvas and Armin begins taking the gun casing apart, laying the pieces out on the fabric like a scientist dissecting a butterfly. Every so often, they're tested on how quickly they can disassemble and reassemble their gear. Armin has the second fastest time. The first belongs to Krista, who works with the precision of a surgeon.

"Ah." Armin picks up two nearly identical, comma-shaped pieces. "These guides are messed up." He points out the one difference between them: a narrow groove that allows the line to be caught by the gears that pull it back.

Mikasa runs her hand through her hair in frustration.

"Did you try to clean all the parts at once?" Armin asks.

She glances at the floor. "You'd think it'd be faster."

"Yeah, but it makes it easier to get the parts mixed up," Armin says.

Mikasa finds cleaning the pieces one by one unbearably tedious. Armin finds it almost relaxing, like the needlework his mother sometimes got lost in, sitting late in the evenings by the fireplace. A remnant of it, a little scrap of fabric with an embroidered bluebird, lines his pocket. Armin screws the casing back together and slips the tiny screwdriver back into the case of tools. "Try it again," he says.

Mikasa reconnects the canister of gas. She aims at the wall. "Clear," she says out of protocol. The hooks pierce the wood. Thin strips of sun stream in from the holes in the wall where so many hooks have been torn away. She clicks the trigger again and the line zips back into its canister with a satisfying thwack.

Eren nods. "You going to try to beat your time tomorrow?" Once they demonstrate they have the gear in working order, they'll have to disassemble it in front of Shadis and approve any modifications.

"It's a stupid exercise," Armin says. They lay their gear on the labeled shelves and push open the door into the blinding afternoon sun.

"Why?" Eren asks.

"Well the whole point is to get familiar with the gear, right?" Armin squints as his eyes adjust. "But you are familiar with it. There's no point in doing it quickly, it's just a memory exercise. Like what titan's going to politely sit and wait while you roll out your canvas, get out your tools..."

Mikasa lets out a dry, morbid laugh.

"Oh, come on," Eren says. "People have to troubleshoot the gear all the time, right?"

"Well it's not like if the gas gets disconnected, you just hook it back up," Armin says. "Anything else goes wrong, you're pretty much just dangling there like a piece of bait on a fishing line, right?"

"God, Armin, don't talk about it like that," Mikasa says, laughing in spite of herself.

"But it's true, right?" He turns his palms up. "I mean, that's what happens, isn't it?"

Eren doesn't want to agree. He doesn't want to admit Armin's right. The ways in which one can die are virtually endless, and largely undignified. Eren doesn't want to give up the shred of hope that he relies on: that if something goes go wrong, Armin will figure it out.

**  
Eren thrashes in bed. He sits upright, his breathing hard and raspy. Armin pushes himself up off the mattress and sits next to him. They say nothing; they know they don't have to. Armin can imagine what Eren has just seen. He holds Eren's shoulders for a few moments, his steady grip guiding him back into reality. Eren rests his forehead on Armin's shoulder until his breathing returns to normal. Armin runs his fingers through Eren's hair, his scalp is barely moist with sweat.

Eren lays back down. "I'm sorry I woke you up," he whispers.

"Eren. It's ok," Armin says, resting his hand on Eren's chest. When Eren shuts his eyes again, Armin kisses them. He hovers for a moment, his breath warm on Eren's face, then kisses Eren's mouth. Eren reaches for Armin's waist and pulls him on top of him.

It feels so different now to touch him, Eren thinks. Not just because they're heavier and taller, or because a dense wall of muscle now covers the spaces where Eren used to be able to slip his fingers between Armin's ribs. He always reached for Armin as a child, whenever he felt scared or ill at ease. But now the desire to reach for him is unconditional, a constant presence at the edge of his consciousness.

He seeks Armin out more than usual now. In their moments alone, he reaches for his hand or kisses him discreetly. It doesn't surprise Armin that Eren finds it comforting, grounding. But it makes him feel flushed and nervous. Eren's touch is familiar, but the reaction it provokes is foreign. It leaves Armin with the uneasy fear that his body will betray him, and a hollow longing once the moment of privacy ends. He would initiate more, he thinks, if Eren didn't always beat him to it.

It was Eren who had kissed him first, as children. Armin recoiled, startled and confused. "Why did you do that?" he asked.

"I just...wanted to," Eren said, flustered. "But...if you don't like it...I won't do it again."

"No," Armin said shyly. "I liked it."

Eren only kissed him when they were alone.

"I've only ever seen my parents kiss like that," Armin mentioned one day, feeling antsy after another kiss.

"Oh," Eren said. "I thought it was just something you do if someone is special to you."

Armin glowed at the words, but he soon felt anxious again. "But... I've never seen you kiss Mikasa."

Eren stood still, with no words to explain why Armin was different.

**

The horses munch their hay serenely while Armin and Mina groom them. Armin runs a comb through his horse's mane, then brushes her flanks with long, slow strokes. Her long-lashed eyes are pure calm. He wishes he could absorb some of her tranquility.

"They've always been my favorite animals," Mina says. She cuts an apple with her pocketknife and feeds her horse a slice.

"Yeah," Armin says. "I like them, too. They used to scare me when I was little, though.”

"I guess back then, they were the only big things to be afraid of," Mina says. Her horse noses her for more apple. "I decided to stay," she says.

"Yeah?"

Mina nods. "The last course went better than I thought. Besides," she says, slicing into the apple again, "I'd never be able to afford a horse like this on a farmer's pay."

Eren walks along the outside of the stable, carrying a bundle of freshly-cleaned tack. He stops when he hears familiar voices. He leans against the outside wall and listens.

"Sometimes I think they ought to just cut my stipend and pension all together and just buy another horse," Armin says. "They'd be better off."

Mina crosses her arms. "Yeah? And what about the ocean? I thought you had big plans for after this!"

Armin leans into his forgiving horse's side. "Do you remember...early on, when we first got here...that time when Peter and Jonas pulled the wings off a moth?"

She shakes her head. "I don't think I was there for that."

Armin's voice is soft. "It was in the corner of the mess hall," he says. "We were just sitting around after dinner, no one really knew what to do. So...they had this moth, and they, well...they eventually killed it. But for a while they just watched it walk around, and a group of us gathered around to look, and everyone was just laughing..."

Mina searches her memory. "They're from Kroliće, aren't they?" She thinks of the wealthy mining county, untouched by titans.

Armin nods. "After a while they crushed it against the table." He sighs. "I just keep thinking...the minute I step outside the walls..."

Mina looks at the ground, then back up at Armin. "I wish I could say you were wrong."

He shakes his head slowly. "It's not even me I'm worried about." He stands still for a moment, his eyes fixed on the middle distance. "I'm just afraid...I'm going to mess something up. And then Eren or Mikasa is going to have to come after me. And it's not going to be me that gets hurt, it's one of them." Armin's horse nuzzles him. "And I'm going to be back at that table...watching something that can't fly anymore...slowly getting crushed. By something that doesn't even care."

Mina wraps her arms around Armin's shoulders. Outside, Eren leans against the bleached wood of the wall in the bright sun. His eyes sting with tears and he feels suddenly stupid. How could you have thought you knew everything there was to know about him?

**

The next morning comes quicker than Eren can breach the subject.

“Orient them this way.” Armin points to the long crates of rifles Jean and Marco load into the wagon. “They won’t fit otherwise.”

Jean gives him a confused look.

“No, the other way.” He gestures again.

“Ohhh,” the two other boys say simultaneously, a little light flicking on in their heads.

“That’s a much better way to do it,” Marco says, scratching his head.

The supply line logistics are the least exciting thing they study, but one of the most important. They restock the nearest outposts for the Garrison and the Survey Corps. The trainees hate the grunt work of loading up the wagons. But to Armin, it's all just math problems: how to get the most supplies onto the fewest carts, use the fewest horses, reach the outposts the fastest. Efficiency.

Bertolt groans and rubs his back. The burden of lifting cannon shot falls on the largest men.

“You and Reiner ought to lift those crates together,” Armin says. Bertolt looks embarrassed. “I mean…it’s just…well, it’s easier to lift fifty pounds twenty times than a hundred pounds ten times. Don’t you think?” His guts clench. Like he could even lift the crates if he wanted to. Quick, think of something helpful, he tells himself; if you can’t do real work, at least make things easier for the others.

Bertolt sighs and nods. It's not like they keep logs of how many crates they haul. And unless Ymir is showing off, the girls lift everything in teams.

Armin notices Bert’s sullen expression as he hitches the horses to the wagon. Here we go again, he thinks.

“Hey Bert, when’s the storm coming?” Franz teases, walking past. Annie glares; Bertolt avoids eye contact.

That morning, Bertolt had not been in the barrack. He woke up in the middle of the training yard, covered in the morning dew. Of all the trainees, he's the only one to suffer from bouts of sleepwalking, and the others tease him mercilessly. Where will he be today? The stables? The kitchen? The showers? “They say if you make a map of where Bert wakes up and connect the dots, it’ll reveal the future! We got ourselves a sleepwalking oracle!”

But the sky looks clear to Armin as they set off into the hills toward the next town.

**

The rains came out of nowhere. Maybe Bert really is a sleepwalking oracle, Armin thinks. Fat drops spatter the ground, and it turns into mud under the horses’ hooves. They've pulled wagons from the mud before. But the trail is steep and narrow, and it runs by the bank of a deep river between two  sharp cliff faces.

They trudge forward, and the rain does not relent. Now streams of water pour down the face of the craggy hill next to them, carrying silt and rocks with it.

Armin notices a dark shape in front of him. The trunk of a massive dead tree leans over the path, rotted at the base, weakened from the rain. Did no one scout this path for hazards beforehand? But surely, no one expected the storm…

Too late.

The tree falls in an instant. Screams ring out and pierce the sound of rain. Thousands of pounds of rotten wood slam into the mud. Annie’s horse jumps and throws her into the water below, Mina’s slips and takes her with him. More screaming. A sound grenade fires.

Eren throws off his maneuvering gear and sprints toward the water. Learning to swim would be part of the cadet training, but it hasn’t happened yet. Only a few trainees can swim, including himself, Armin, and Mikasa.

“Eren, wait!” Armin screams. “Leave your blades, keep your lines!” The metal boxes weigh them down, but they need an anchor to climb up the slippery bank.

“Like this!” Armin shouts and shoots an anchor into a tree trunk on the opposite side of the river. He unhinges the boxes at his sides and dives into the water after Mina. In a flash, Eren understands. But he threw off his gear too quickly. He fights to reconfigure it. He panics. Mina’s hands break the surface, then slip back under. Her horse is downstream, just barely far enough to keep his frantic kicks from maiming the thrown riders. Eren spots Annie's head under the rushing surface, dragged down by the weight of her gear.

Mikasa screams to Sasha, next to her. “Keep an anchor on this side of the bank!” They each fire to one side of the river and rush in after Annie.

Eren looks around frantically. Sasha’s line strains the young tree she's hooked into. But there are few other reliable anchor points.

Suddenly two heads break the surface of the water. Armin flings his hair out of his face and shouts to Eren, “Use the wagon!”

Of course, you idiot, Eren tells himself; it weighs thousands of pounds and it’s stuck in ankle-deep mud.

Mina gasps for air and clutches Armin’s shoulders. Eren jumps into the water to relieve them. Mikasa and Sasha hold onto Annie, suspended between their metal cords, straining against the current.

The other cadets rush to the edge of the bank to hoist the others back onto the shore. A frazzled Shadis barks out orders. Everyone in the convoy in front of the huge fallen tree is to move forward, then take a longer route back. The dozen soldiers behind it will return to base with the medic. Jean, Marco, Bertolt, and Reiner are to try to rescue Mina’s horse, still flailing in the water, then catch up with the others.

The two stunned women lie in the back of the wagon with the medic. Armin tries to calm Annie's spooked horse, making shushing noises, gently patting the mare's wet flank. When he turns around, Eren stands looking at him, his face lit up with admiration.


	4. Chapter 4

Armin throws off his soaked hood as they traipse through the mud. In rain this hard, the fabric has no purpose. Armin lets the water pelt his face. His wet clothes cling tight to his body, the gear pulls and twists at awkward angles, and he feels a surge of sadness for the horses in their wet saddles. He slumps forward, clings to his horse’s neck, and remembers.

He lay stretched out on the warm, flat river rocks in the late afternoon sun while Eren swam below.

“Hey Armin, are there fish in the ocean?”

“Of course.”

“What kind?”

“Giant ones.”

“The kind that nibble your toes?”

Eren reached up to tickle Armin’s feet. Armin retracted with a shriek.

“No,” he said, glaring. “The monstrous kind. The kind that try to drown you.”

He jumped from the rock into Eren’s arms, and pulled the two of them underwater. They broke the surface, laughing. Armin reached for Eren’s ticklish stomach. Eren screamed, and Armin burst out laughing again. Eren wrapped his arms around Armin as hard as he could.

“You know what I’m gonna do once I kill all the titans?”

“No, what?” Armin gasped, still giggling.

“I’m gonna go after all the monsters in the ocean.”

“I see,” Armin said. “And what are you gonna do when you find one?” he asked, wriggling out of Eren’s grip, fingers dangerously close to Eren’s weak spots.

Eren glanced around hastily, saw that there was no one else around, and gripped Armin tighter.

“This,” he said, and kissed him.

Armin drew back, and Eren let go, suddenly anxious.

“I’m sorry—“

“No,” Armin said, shaking his head. “You just—surprised me. That’s all.”

Eren deflated with relief. Armin placed his hands on Eren’s hips and drew him closer. He kissed Eren’s collarbone lightly, then his cheek, then his mouth. How strange it was to be touched there, he thought; mouths are so awkward and wet. Why does it feel good, why does it make you feel like melting?

He lost track of time as they stood there, warm against each other in the cold current. In the water, their bodies felt so light. Eventually, they climbed back onto the rocks and stretched out next to each other. Armin sat up and looked at Eren, serene in the warm glow filtering through the trees. He leaned down and kissed Eren again.

Then he reached for Eren’s unguarded stomach and tickled him. Eren’s scream and Armin’s sinister laugh echoed through the gully.

Armin smiles at the memory. He climbs down from his horse and pulls himself from the thick mud that threatens to suck the boots right off of his feet.

Eren waits for him at the end of the stable. When he catches up, Eren peels a lock of wet hair off the side of Armin's face and tucks it behind his ear.

"I like the color your hair turns when it's wet," Eren says. "It looks silver."

Armin smiles and looks at the ground. Eren slips his finger beneath Armin's chin and tilts his face up to kiss him.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had hoped to finish this sooner, but moving cities got in the way! For those who feel inclined to re-read, major edits have been made to the first four chapters. The events of the story are the same, but I felt something was missing emotionally. Anyways, please enjoy my cheesy fluffball of a final chapter, and thanks for reading!

The bathhouse is dark when Eren and Armin walk in. Eren lights an oil lantern and hangs it in the frame of the door to the showers. The flickering light casts long, strange shadows on the tile, and rain pelts the frosted skylights.

They peel off their wet capes, their heavy clothes and gear. Eren opens the taps and dense clouds of steam catch the light. He reaches for Armin's narrow torso, he wants to kiss him against the wall the way he does when they're the last to leave the bathhouse. But Armin sinks back against the tile and slides to the floor. He wraps his arms around his knees and rests his forehead on them. Deep, lurid bruises bloom across his pale skin.

"Armin?"

Armin tilts his head back against the wall. He sits in silence for a moment, then looks up at the dark ceiling. "What just happened?" he asks the air more than Eren.

Eren looks confused and hurt. "What are you talking about? Armin, what's wrong?" He sits down next to Armin and brushes the damp strings of hair out of Armin's face. The tile still feels cold against the hot steam.

"Even nature wants to kill us," Armin says. "We haven't even faced a titan yet, and we're already getting picked off." His voice is a creaky whisper.

"What? But Annie and Mina are all right, aren't they?"

"That's not what I mean," Armin says.

"Hey," Eren slips his arm between Armin and the slick wall and wraps it around his shoulders. "What's the matter with you?"

"I don't know. I got caught against the rocks. Everything hurts, I—"

"Do you need to go to the clinic?" Eren's eyes are wide with worry.

"What?" Armin turns to Eren, then looks dejectedly at the floor. "No, it's not that, I just..." He shakes his head and shuts his eyes. "I tried to do too much," he whispers, ashamed. "I know I did."

"When?"

"This week. When we were training," Armin says. His eyes follow the steam upward again. "If you hadn't come to get me and Mina...when we were in the water...we both would have drowned," he says. "My arms hurt so much, and the current—"

"Armin, if you hadn't jumped in after her, she definitely would have drowned!" Eren kneels, gripping both of Armin's shoulders.

"Eren—"

"If you hadn't told me to get my lines back, I would have drowned, too."

Armin pushes Eren's hands away.

"They all would have," Eren says. He sits down across from Armin, who hangs his head and says nothing. "If you hadn't shown them—"

"Eren, I know." Armin looks back up, his eyes filled with tears. "I know, ok? I got an idea. But that's it. That's all I've got—"

"Armin, what are you talking about?" Eren touches the side of Armin's face, and Armin shuts his eyes again. "I heard what you said to Mina in the stables," Eren says, his voice soft. "Armin, how can you even think that way? All you ever do is get me out of scrapes—"

"Eren, just stop, all right?"

Eren freezes. "I'm sorry," he whispers.

"What's going to happen, Eren," Armin says after a moment, voice trembling, "when I run out of ideas? What then?" Armin sniffles.

Eren sits still, speechless.

"Everyone knows that's all I've got," Armin says. "What happens when I don't even have that?"

Eren reaches his arms out. "Come here," he says.

Armin looks confused. Eren leans over and guides Armin to sit in his lap, facing him. Armin rests his head on Eren's shoulder and Eren winds his fingers through the wet tendrils of Armin's hair. "It doesn't matter," Eren whispers.

"What doesn't matter?"

Eren clutches Armin closer. "That you can think quickly."

Armin scoffs.

Eren takes a deep breath. "Sometimes I think if I couldn't sleep next you, I'd never be able to sleep again."

"Eren."

"I mean it," Eren says. "So maybe you don't figure everything out. I don't care." His throat tightens. "There's no point to it...there's no point to any of it...if you're not there." Eren squints and Armin feels the heat of a teardrop on his shoulder. "So maybe you run out of ideas...it's ok, you know?" There's a quaver to Eren's voice. "Maybe you never get a good idea again," he says, with a little pained laugh. "So what? I don't care, I still want you with me—"

Armin reaches for the back of Eren's neck and runs his fingers through his hair. He looks up and kisses Eren. When he draws back, he heaves a sigh. It's a sin to waste hot water like this, but Armin doesn't want to move, he wants to stay clutching Eren in the heat and the dark.

"You know I think you're brilliant, don't you?" Eren asks. He rests his cheek against Armin's. "But even if you weren't, it wouldn't matter. You'd still be my best friend. You're the one who taught me about the outside world, you think I'm going to see it without you?"

Eren kisses Armin's forehead, then his cheek, then his collarbone. He slides his hands down Armin's waist to his hips. Armin leans back, and Eren kisses him just above the soft patch of hair between his legs.

Then there are footsteps. The door to the vestibule creaks open. Eren groans. "Why are they back so soon?"

"That can't be good," Armin says. He pushes himself up slowly, painfully, and Eren follows. "Tonight," he whispers in Eren's ear. "No one will be around to hear."

One night, in their first weeks of training, Armin couldn't sleep. He walked down from the bunk, slipped his boots on, and set out to walk across the training yard until fatigue would claim him. When he passed the bathhouse, he thought he heard the sound of fighting. Alarmed, he stepped inside. He spotted Bert and Reiner tangled in the corner of the showers. They were not fighting. Armin never did manage to fall asleep that night.

In the weeks that followed, Eren dashed back to the bathhouse when he realized his neck was free of its ubiquitous key. He found it on the floor near the bench where he had gotten dressed. When he stood up, he saw the back of Jean's head between Marco's legs in the shower. For an awkward moment he locked eyes with a red-faced Marco, then casually walked off, as if nothing had happened. At dinner that night, Mikasa noticed Marco and Eren kept looking at each other across the mess hall.

Eren runs his soapy washcloth delicately across Armin's body. Armin stands under the warm spray while Eren bathes himself. They say nothing to the four bedraggled boys who walk in as they walk out.

**

Sasha's damp hair hangs loose in her face. She plays an uninspired game of chess with Mikasa, who wears her scarf unfolded, draped like a shawl around her shoulders. Their tin mugs of tea send up thin lines of steam, and a single log burns in the fireplace. Eren and Armin shut the heavy door behind them and fill their mugs from the kettle by the fire. Except for the rain, the long common room is silent. No sound of Marco's guitar, or shuffling cards, or the swirl of conversation. The others won't return until morning.

Armin lays on the long bench across from the fireplace with his head in Eren's lap when the four boys walk in. Their faces look sallow and tired. They pull wooden chairs over from the wall and make a lopsided circle near the fire.

"What happened?" Armin asks them, sitting up.

They look at each other.

"We had to shoot him," Reiner says after a moment. "Two of his legs were broken."

He and Bert sit down with their drinks. Bert slumps over with his head propped up by his palm.

Marco's face looks red. "I really don't want to have to tell Mina," he says. Jean rubs his back. "She loved that horse so much..."

"I'll do it," Armin says.

"Would you?" Marco asks.

"Yeah. It's all right. I don't mind." There's no strategy for this, Armin thinks. No scheme or plan for dealing with the silence, the fatigue, the disappointment. Just sitting, just being.

"Thank you," Marco says. He sinks back into his chair.

"Are, um, are they...ok?" Bert looks up anxiously.

"Uh...they will be," Armin says. "Mina got scraped up pretty bad. They think she fractured some ribs from the rocks."

"What about Annie?" Bert asks, his voice cracking.

"She has a concussion. I think she's ok, otherwise," Armin says.

Bert nods and sips his tea. There's a moment of uncomfortable silence.

Jean rubs Marco's shoulder. "How about some music?"

"I don't really feel like playing," he says. More quiet.

"Do you want me to read something?" Armin asks.

Marco's eyes brighten.

Bert runs his hand through his hair. "Yeah, actually. That'd be nice."

"Give me a second, I'll go get the book," Marco says.

By now they know all the stories by heart. The others had teased Marco for bringing it with him, the leather-bound volume of folktales and fables from Mitras. It was later that he realized how badly they missed being read to.

Marco clutches the book to his chest to protect it from the rain. He hands it to Armin who runs his thumb gently along the yellowed parchment pages.

Armin doesn't have to speak loudly, he can let his voice be naturally soft with only the rain to compete. He chooses a longer chapter: a story about witches in caves and talking bears. The girls put away their chess game and pull up their chairs. He notices the others' faces as he reads: dreamy and lost, content to be somewhere other than here. It feels good, Armin thinks, as the familiar words flow, to be able to do something. No stroke of genius, no feat of strength. Just calming words.

"I like how you do the voices," Marco says as they trek back to the barrack, the rain now a drizzle.

**

Eren brushes Armin's face. "Hey. Are you awake?"

Armin winces as he rolls over. "Mmhmm."

"You feeling ok?"

"I feel like I weigh about a thousand pounds," Armin whispers.

"Oh," Eren says.

"No," Armin says, "I still want to go to the bathhouse. I'm just tired."

"You want me to carry you?" The light from the window glints off Eren's teeth when he grins.

"Oh my god. No."

Eren laughs. "I'm kidding. You sure you feel ok?"

"Eren. I haven't gotten to be completely alone with you since the last time we swam in the river." Armin sits up and slides toward the ladder, the bunk beneath them empty.

But his gait is heavy as they walk through the dark to the bathhouse, and Eren slips his arm around Armin to steady him. Eren lights the lantern again and shortens the wick to dim the flame. He sets the lantern on the floor at the edge of the tile. Armin slips out of his night clothes and opens the taps. Eren presses him gently into the wall and kisses him.

"I was thinking about what you said earlier," Eren says, his hands drifting across Armin's body. "The last time we went swimming, and you were lying on the rocks," Eren kisses Armin's neck, "I was watching the water. And there was this feather in the rapids," he kisses Armin's chest. "And these twigs and leaves and things kept getting pulled under, but this feather wouldn't sink." He grabs Armin's hips. "And I watched it and I knew if it could go far enough, it would reach the ocean."

Armin sighs at Eren's touch.

"I want to try something," Eren says.

"What?"

"Put your legs around me."

Armin hesitates.

"Come on, I just want to try it. Here, I'll pick you up."

Armin wraps his arms around Eren's shoulders. He lifts his knee and Eren pulls him upward, both of them hard, their bodies flushed with heat.

Eren's breath is a low growl against Armin's neck. "I have never in my life thought of you as a burden," he says. "You know that. Don't you?"

Armin nods and lets his body sink into the wall, propped up by Eren's arms.

Eren's eyelashes graze Armin's cheek. "To me you've always been light as a feather."


End file.
